Conan O’Brien seems less watchable without the Andy Richter sidekick. In fact, as much as I want to like him, he makes me switch channels at a time of night that I’m usually so sleepy that I’m pretty patient even with amateur-hour “I’ll eat a pig” huckster commercials.
Leno is at least a decent poor man’s Bob Hope. Giving the show to Conan would be an earlier time’s equivalent of giving the show to Don Rickles or Phyllis Diller. Is this plan really for real?

Carson Bee

I don’t watch Leno but O’Brien is one of the few talk-show personalities that makes me feel squirmy even when I’m the only one in the room watching. He is so self-conscious that everything he does seems contingent: big laugh? go one way; little laugh? another. From his embarrassing hop onto the stage to his weird asides during each guest, he’s makes my skin prickle.
It seems to me another case of mainstream media making decisions based primarily on contracts, status quo and middle-of-the-road stock — by 2009 it will truly be irrelevant.

http://www.elflife.com/ carsonfire

The more I think about this… committing to O’Brien to take over? Five years from now?
This has got to simply be an effort to breathe life into the ratings of both shows. It’s got to be. There’s no way the future heads of the network are going to hold themselves to an O’Brien decision made five years in the past.